Unitarian Universalist Meeting of South Berkshire

July 2, 2006

“Our General Assembly:

Peace, Freedom, and Moving On”

Rev. Kathy Duhon

I come to you from St. Louis, Missouri, where I attended the UU Minister Days, and then the General Assembly of our Unitarian Universalist Association, a full-bodied, full-flavored extravaganza. Today I bring you a few tastes of my many experiences, with more to come in the future.

The first words we received were on the front cover of the minister’s program, the words of William Sloan Coffin, Jr. (who died recently): “The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.” A good start.

The first speaker during Minister Days was Sharon Salzberg, a Buddhist who helped start the Insight Meditation Society with Jack Kornfield. She was a wonderful speaker, and imparted much wisdom. At one point she told a story that Bob Thurman had told her: Imagine that you’re on a subway and Martians come and zap the subway doors closed so that you’re together forever. What do you do? You become a community, who calms and cares for each other. It’s natural. Responsiveness is not based on esteem, on worthiness, on likeability. All are connected. Sharon said she tells this story everywhere, probably more than Bob does.

Then, later she said she was stuck on a plane on the runway for 3 ½ hours and people were complaining, yelling, stressed – a rather unpleasant situation. Then she thought of the story, and she said, “Maybe these are my people and I will be with them forever.” It changes everything, she said, from your attention to your attitude to your action. My people.

This was the beginning of a theme for the week, and I should say it was the theme of connection and peace and freedom and moving on together, but actually, what I noticed was the airplane/airport theme. On the way out, my parents and I had already had a minor skirmish with delays and flight changes, and the possibility of being separated, but I pleaded on behalf of the 80 year olds, and we made it through, barely. Besides Sharon’s airplane story, we heard an airport one from Mary Oliver. On Saturday night, the much beloved poet, Mary Oliver, spoke, mostly reading from her incredible collection of poetry her vivid words about nature, compassion, peace. She read a poem she’d written while waiting in Logan airport for some great length of time – I believe she said 4 ½ hours. Then she said, it was time to update it, because now waiting in airports is even longer.

We got up before dawn on Monday in St. Louis to go home. I was due to arrive in Albany at 8:30 that night, after delivering my parents to Virginia. With many delays and cancellations, I arrived home the next day, on Tuesday afternoon, having heard from some 30 strangers during the 2 days they shared with me, of their various difficult airport/airplane stories. The last time I spent 2 days flying, the only time I spent 2 days flying, I went all the way from Calcutta to Boston, but that’s almost 8 times the distance! I did try to think about “my people”, and how I was grateful we had food and working restrooms and were not out in the rain, (except once). These were “my people”, even the woman who wanted to charge me a change fee when there was no way I could make the connection. My people are messy and difficult, but we are all connected and I am home, finally, with you, my people indeed.

Back to Sharon Salzberg’s talk. She talked about the Buddhist faith, and has written a book on the subject. I know it sounds like an oxymoron – Buddhist faith – but not to her, and I loved hearing a wide angle view on faith. She said that in the Buddhist tradition, faith is not a commodity, but an unfolding condition of the heart, which grows and deepens because of wisdom. What a beautiful definition – faith is an unfolding of the heart, a growing, a deepening. The Buddhist word she was translating as faith is saddha, which means to offer one’s heart, and can also mean trust.

Sharon also translated the Buddhist word that is usually translated “attachment” as instead, “what we try to grasp or control”, since the English word attachment is not quite the right meaning, and causes many Westerners to stumble over Buddhism. A couple of days later, I heard another use of the word attachment. Denny Davidoff was speaking about her work as a leader in the UUA, and she explained how something was organized when one person emailed another person who emailed her. Denny said, “That’s how email works – we’re all just attachments. Somehow this seemed to be about “my people”, too, all of us attached, not grasping, but connected to each other.

I went to a 2 part workshop on “living theology” and it was quite good. Gretchen Woods led it, explaining that our definition of theology is large, larger than the original “study of God”, and it exists in some form for all of us. One definition of theology, for example, is the exploration of our human experience in matters of ultimacy, or, theology is the study of the mysterious and transcendent. Our theology is living because we live it everyday – we make our choices based on it. It is also living because it changes. So we need to bring to consciousness our theology, our understanding of the depth and ultimacy of experience, from which we can then live our choices well.

Perhaps the most challenging experience of the week was the lecture by one of our ministers, Bill Schulz. Some of you know him as the Executive Director of Amnesty International, who made a big stir when he called the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, “the American Gulag”. He has recently stepped down from Amnesty, after 12 years of championing human rights in a world with so much brokenness and so much need for an understanding of “my people”, “our people”.

Bill Schulz spoke about “What Tortures Taught Me” and he left nothing to our imagination, giving us the full tour of his world, of the evil that is done by ordinary people. He told us that we have to consider the way we do religion, given that torture exists. No sermon or worship service should be trivial – all should be real and worthy of the person in our midst who may have been tortured. He has wrestled with his understanding of God in light of torture, and came to the belief that God is not everywhere, because God is not in the torture chamber. Most challenging was his questions to us about human nature. Can we really say that all people have inherent worth and dignity? He knows of a few that he’d disqualify. I disagree, but I totally respect his understanding on this one. My past friendships with murderers from my prison volunteering days informs me, as well as my living theology, but I know that this is difficult territory, worthy of a living and lively theological debate. In fact, the UUA is now beginning a study process of our 7 principles, and we will likely re-word them, if not re-consider our radical beliefs, including in the “inherent worth and dignity of every person”. So stay tuned – it will be done UU style – which means that all of us can be part of the process of saying what it is that we really truly covenant to affirm and promote.

Bill Schulz ended positively, after dragging us through his hell. He said that his work against torture also confirmed for him the “indomitable spirit” of people and the “mysterious workings of unfettered grace”.

A few more samples of the UU “smorgasbord” I attended: I heard an excellent Susan B. Anthony quote about foreign policy. “How can you not be all on fire? ... I really believe I shall explode if some of you young women don't wake up --and raise your voice in protest against the impending crime of this nation upon the new islands it has clutched from other folks. Do come into the living present and work to save us from any more barbaric male governments.” (Can I hear an Amen?) How can we help but be on fire when our government’s foreign policy betrays “my people”, “our people”.

I went to workshops about UU Spiritual Direction, again, not an oxymoron, but a vital and growing dimension of our religion, and about a new Coming of Age Program, and the UU Trauma Response Team, which has been active since just after Sept. 11^th. We heard that Beacon Press is doing well, in the black, thank you very much, and that we have just sponsored a chair at Harvard Divinity School – the Ralph Waldo Emerson UUA Professorship. Also, we have a new health plan available to UU ministers and staff very soon which doesn’t discriminate against non-traditional families, and is portable, a real break-through for justice.

We were given extraordinary presentations on the Hurricane disaster and our UU response. We UUs gave $3.5 million, and sent a few teams to work down there, including our Trauma Response Team. We also had UUs very involved in ensuring fairness during the recent Louisiana elections. We are rebuilding our UU church buildings and we are helping to rebuild lives torn asunder. We had a non-UU guest from Louisiana who spoke to us, as well as many Unitarian Universalists from the Gulf Coast and other UUs who helped out there. Our guest was an African American Baptist minister from a destroyed town in South Louisiana. He said he didn’t know what a UU was when we arrived to help, but now he says he’s “an honorary Baptist Unitarian Universalist”. We cheered. One of our ministers from New Orleans, Marta Valentin, said, “Resurrection is more than hope; it is our experience.”

We do some work at our annual meetings, on our internal process, and on our commitment to work in the world. Each year we have the opportunity of choosing a new study/action issue and of approving a final version of one that has been studied for a couple of years. Our new one for study is on Peacemaking and our upcoming finalized one is about the Threat of Global Warming. Representatives of the UUA, as well as individual congregations and members will be studying and advocating for peace, and for work to prevent global warming.

We also passed five Actions of Immediate Witness, which you heard earlier. One of them endorsed “The Declaration of Peace” campaign, but another one calling for a Department of Peace failed to reach 2/3 majority. I voted for it. Peacemaking was a strong theme for the week, as well as freedom and justice. And always, we were encouraged to move on with the work. We sang so many amazing songs to send us on our way, including an especially moving one, “We Who Believe In Freedom Cannot Rest”.

We were active in St. Louis. One group gave out free bottles of water – it was hot. Our local cause this year was to support a gym that is free for children after school. Some marched for gay pride. And, in the local newspaper, we had coverage of our General Assembly, as well as the publication of an op-ed in support of living wages, co-authored by UUA President William Sinkford and UUSC President Charlie Clements.

I want to share two last quotes that I loved and heard this week. The first is from Alice Walker, who was overheard by one of our speakers to say, “As I get older, the thing that matters more to me than anything is goodness.” And I also heard the last, dying words of Suffragist Lucy Stone quoted, “Make the world better.”

On this fourth of July weekend, let us celebrate by renewing our work for peace and freedom, and by moving on with goodness to make the world a better place for my people, our people, we the people.